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If Section 230 is going to be dismantled, some say health misinformation is a way to start
Ben Werschkul·Senior Producer and Writer
Tue, October 26, 2021, 4:03 AM
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act helped create the modern Internet by allowing companies like Facebook (FB), Twitter (TWTR), and Google (GOOG) to operate without being held liable for content posted on their platform by third parties.
But what if that changed? Not all at once as some like President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have suggested – but one brick at a time.
Going at the law piece by piece is what many tech critics want, and some think health misinformation is the way to start.
That’s the idea behind a recent bill from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), co-sponsored with Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D., N.M.) – that would create an exception to Section 230 when it comes to platforms and algorithms that promote misinformation related to an existing public health emergency.
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'Attempts to define health misinformation’
What constitutes health misinformation under the Klobuchar and Luján bill would be up to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which would be tasked with providing guidance.
The idea has its critics. Jeff Kosseff, professor of cybersecurity law at the U.S. Naval Academy and author of a book on Section 230 titled “The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet,” has argued that efforts to outlaw certain social media content could face an uphill battle.
He says the idea is “very well-intentioned,” but “it attempts to define health misinformation by allowing a single government official to issue guidance and that is what really scares me; that gets a little too much like the ministry of truth for my taste.”
Kosseff notes that what is called misinformation today could swing from administration to administration. Another challenge would be how the provisions would be enforced given that much false speech is protected by the First Amendment...
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